US Ambassador Crocker:" Middle East do not fall into neat chapters, with beginnings and ends"

[sabra]

http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8UKVUL00.html

<snip>

Americans need to realize that conflicts in the Middle East do not fall into neat chapters, with beginnings and ends, Crocker said. Sometimes, the American government has made a decision to support governments that it knew were repressive, including Saddam Hussein when he was fighting Iran in the 1980s.

"We knew he was really, really bad," said Crocker, who served in Iraq while Saddam was in power. But the United States made the choice to back Saddam to stop Iran, which had recently overthrown the shah and was threatening to dominate the region.

Similarly, it made a choice to back Islamic jihadists against the Soviet Union in Iraq, at a time when the Soviets were looking to spread their power from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

"There probably wasn't another good choice," he said. "The mistake, in retrospect, was to say, once the Soviets were gone, 'Problem solved.' There's always a 'Then what?'"

For Crocker, there is no more "Then what?" after Iraq. He said he promised his wife, also a career foreign service officer whom he met on assignment in Baghdad, that he would retire early next year. He made a similar promise when he accepted the post in Pakistan, but this time, he said, he means it. Whoever wins the election in November, they can bring in a new ambassador to Iraq in 2009, he said.

[gateley]

1. This is EXACTLY what Biden said --

right down to the "then what"? But they choose not to listen to him because he's not part of Bushco. :grr:

[L. Coyote]

2. Wars. Easier to start than to stop. D'oh!